Los Angeles County is big. In fact, it’s four times the area of the entire State of Rhode Island. Nonetheless, anyone familiar with our area knows that land here does not grow on trees. We are, after all, over 10 million residents. Land is scarce. It’s most...

Sometimes adding a deck to the second story of a home is just the right thing to do. There are, to be sure, a few compelling reasons for this step. For example, houses built on steep slopes. Second story decks, in fact , are sometimes the only possible decks....

There are two ways a homeowner ends up with a deck that’s not spacious enough. One is by purchasing a home with an existing deck. The buyer may even know up front the deck’s too small, but likes the house. Then, there are the homeowners who add decks to...

As we noted in a post last year, the addition of a deck to a home bodes well for the property’s resale value. Estimates of Return On Investment for adding a deck are in the 65%-80% range, nationally. Since the use value of a deck is partly a function of climate,...

In a typical year, our Los Angeles area gets new fewer than 284 sunny days. That’s pretty cool. But the sun itself has a tendency to heat things up. It heats up LA to temperatures above 90 degrees on one in three days in August. The sun’s rays, moreover, are pretty...